I tend to like pirate novels better in theory than in practice, but this was surprisingly fun and clever.

This is a dual timeline book featuring a woman turned buccaneer during the golden age of piracy in the first and a Radcliffe professor in the second. I actually preferred the second timeline, though much of its charm is fed by the first timeline, which is surprisingly (since it’s the one with the pirates) less compelling, but still enjoyable to read.

I appreciated Howe’s accuracy about the realities of piracy even when those realities are ugly. But I appreciated her willingness to stay her hand on the matter even more. She gives you enough to convey the hardships and brutality of pirate life without turning the narrative excessively grotesque.

An unusual tale, well researched and populated by an intriguing cast of characters.

To be completely honest I requested this book because of Petrea Burchard. I had no idea she was doing audiobooks and I was excited to hear her voice again after many years of her living in my head as Ryoko. I was not disappointed, she is a great narrator. The book was a pleasant surprise - I really enjoyed the swashbuckling tale of Hannah. The writing is solid (just a tad slow at the start) and paints a detailed and exciting adventure that I was happy to follow along with. I don't think I was as enamored with the Marion and Kay storyline - not to the point where I was skipping parts or anything - I just liked the pirate bits better. Thank you NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for the advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

I like to dabble in historical fiction every now and then. It's often hit or miss with me but this story captivated me from start to finish. I absolutely loved every minute of it. It took an unexpected turn in the last quarter of the book, at least it was unexpected to me. Katherine Howe wrote this BEAUTIFULLY! The alternating timelines of Hannah Massury and Marianne and Kay kept me completely engrossed. I loved watching this story come to life between these pages.

I was extremely fortunate to be gifted the physical copy of A True Account as well as the audiobook version. All opinions of this story are mine and mine alone. I found that listening to this story while simultaneously reading it made it extremely enjoyable. I cannot wait to check out more reads from Katherine Howe in the future.

A huge thank you to Macmillan Audio for the audiobook version of this novel and to the publishers at Henry Colt & Co. for the physical copy of A True Account.

A True Account by Katherine Howe
Narrator, Petrea Burchard
I have never read any books by this author before and had to DNF this one. It seemed more like a young adult novel to me.
Narrator seemed fine but I just could not get interested.

This was a fun read and I love reading about women kicking ass doing things that are seen as "masculine" jobs/activities. This was my 1st book by Katherine Howe but will not be my last, as I am adding her books to my TBR. I did feel like this book was a bit long and drug a bit through the middle. I hated how Marian kept trying to get her father's approval but I guess that was just an aspect of the times she was in.

Another fantastically interesting read from Katherine Howe.

In the early 1700's, a young Hannah Masury poses as a cabin boy to escape her life and circumstances in Boston. Unfortunately the ship she picksmutanies and turns pirate, and she is caught up in the adventure. Her diarized story is discover by professor Marian Beresford, a female academic in the 1930's, who sets out on her own adventure to discover to truth of Hannah Masury's life.

This fast-paced dual narrative is a is gripping and expertly written. I would recommend it for lovers of historical fiction, lady pirates, and character studies.

Thanks to Net Gallery for the advanced reader copy.

A True Account by Katherine Howe is a historical fiction novel featuring pirates and dual timelines.

Featuring alternating dual timelines, Hannah Masury starts bound to service at a waterfront tavern in 1726 Boston but soon finds herself disguised as a cabin boy and mixed up with a rag-tag group of pirates. Professor Marian Beresford teaches at Cambridge in the 1930s, when a student brings her a journal that may lead them to pirate treasure.

I was really into this at the very beginning; Hannah really drew me in. The narrator does a great job reading, and the production quality is great. However, I didn't like the ending and this overall wasn't the knock out of the park that I was hoping for.

The earlier storyline is absolutely more developed than the latter. It also abruptly switches timelines. I really wish that in the audiobook version, the narrator would announce the subheadings of the timelines like they are in the print version. There are a handful of chapters that are really long.

Marian is also a queer woman in the 1930s. While I generally appreciate seeing representation in books, I think here it wasn't used as well as it could have been. It felt like an afterthought, and only served to hurt her character further in various ways.

This was a very different kind of story.
It is actually, a story, within a story, about a story!

We have two very different timelines...
One set in the late 1700's, the other in the early to mid 1900's.

We have Hannah Masury, a young girl, who witnesses the hanging death of a pirate, and flees the area...being followed/hunted by pirates, and takes on a new identity, as a boy (a friend of hers who has also died.)

Then we have Marian Beresford, a college professor, and her father, also a doctor, who are pursuing buried/hidden fortune, according to an old book, that one of her students has discovered (Kay).

We are brought through some harrowing tales, that more than likely were actually REAL, not tales, and how people lived (or died) through them. We are shown the terrible ways that pirates took over ships and took all that the passengers/crew had...

And we are shown that often, we take things for granted, when we shouldn't.

Absolutely beautifully written and portrayed through the eyes of all of these characters, who if you are like me, you will come to love (or despise, depending on the circumstances!)

4 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ for me!

Thanks to #NetGalley and #MacmillanAudio for an ARC of this audiobook which was released yesterday, November 21st.

#ATrueAccount by #KatherineHowe.
Beautifully read by #PetreaBurchard.

Check out all my upcoming reads on Instagram @ #BookReviews_with_emsr or on Facebook @ #BookReviewsWithElaine

Thanks for reading!! 📖📚

First line: I don’t know what made me determined to go to the hanging.

Summary: Hannah Masury has spent her life working along the Boston harbor, seeing the ships and crew coming and going each day. When she needs to flee the city she decides to disguise herself as a cabin boy and stows away on a pirate ship, captained by Ned Low. As she chooses her own destiny she knows that there could be rewards as well as danger lurking in her future.

In 1930, Marian Beresford is given a manuscript by one of her students which leads them on the hunt for Hannah Masury’s buried treasure. Marian, a professor, believes that this mystery will help her career if she is able to authenticate the document and discover the history that has been left for them in the beaches of the Caribbean.

My Thoughts: Like Howe’s other books, this a dual narrative spanning centuries. She does this very well and it makes for an interesting and enjoyable story. As I was traveling to the Caribbean at the time, this felt like a good book to listen to as we prepared for our trip.

I have been fascinated with pirates ever since the Pirates of the Caribbean movie came out years ago. And then with the show Black Sails I really got hooked on the real life pirates who actually sailed the seas. It seems like such a crazy life but one that could be very lucrative.

Hannah is a tough girl who is able to deceive many of the men who she sails with. Marian is struggling with her career and is sucked into the thrill of adventure. I definitely enjoyed the parts with Hannah much more than Marian. Marian was more of a supporting character who never seemed too developed while Hannah was the star with a full life and more of a personality.

The end has a big twist which I did not see coming and then another twist that seems to shift the other twist completely out of whack. It was an interesting ending to the story but this was definitely not my favorite of the author’s books.

This story is told in dual timelines of 1726 and 1930. Marian Beresford is a professor at Radcliffe College, the female coordinate to Harvard, when a student comes to her with a manuscript that leads them on a treasure hunt to the Florda Keys. This story is interspersed with pieces of the journal told in first person by Hannah Masury of how she came to sail with pirates including the famed Ned Low in search of a hidden treasure. The audiobook is narrated by Petrea Burchard. This was my first audiobook listen by this narrator and I found her voice to be pleasant and distinctive for both female main characters propelling me along the story in a smooth and easy manner. I did find some of the timeline transitions in both the ebook and audio to be a little rough or abrupt.

I really enjoyed Hannah’s story though some of the tedious daily life on the ship dragged a bit at times. The pirate politics was interesting and added good tension to the story propelling it along with mutinies, revenge, skirmishes and tropical locales. All the things you expect from a pirate story. I especially enjoyed the parrot that they procured during a raid and how it squawked at them in French.

As for Marian’s part of the story, I enjoyed her excitement for the project and the connection she felt with Hannah. However, the dynamic with her student, Kay, was strange and frustrating to me. While the manuscript was found by Kay, as the professor, project lead and procurer of funding, Marian came across as oddly intimidated by the girl and let her run roughshod over the entire process with little to no protest though I found the similar relationship with her intimidating father to be understandable. I would have enjoyed this story more if Marian had come across as a stronger female protagonist.

Thank you to NetGalley, Henry Holt & Company and MacMillan Audio for a copy provided for an honest review.

A riveting dual timeline that shares the story of two women trying to find their way in a world that is dominated, and dictated by men. Part pirate tale and part historical mystery the stories of Hannah and Marian intertwine to expose a long hidden secret of a female pirate who was against the odds in her deception, but survived to tell her tale- or did she? Excellent storytelling and remarkable narration made this an engaging read! Another great historical from Katherine Howe!

Told by two different narrators at two different time periods, this is the story of Hannah Masury and her time with the pirates and Marian Beresford’s quest to find Hannah’s hidden treasure.

What you get is a glimpse into the golden age of piracy. I picked this book because I had previously read and enjoyed another book by the author, “The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane.” Katherine Howe weaves the tales of early Boston and Massachusetts centered around the Puritan culture there, and although this book is about pirates, it’s beginning and Hannah’s sojourn into piracy stems from an escape from Puritan Massachusetts.

Themes: 🏴‍☠️⚓️🪙🏝️⛪️

My thoughts: 🙂🤓

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Title: A True Account
Author: Katherine Howe
Narrator: Petrea Burchard
Pub Date: November 21, 2023
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

𝚃𝚑𝚊𝚗𝚔 𝚢𝚘𝚞 Henry Holt and Macmillan Audio 𝚏𝚘𝚛 𝚖𝚢 #𝚐𝚒𝚏𝚝𝚎𝚍 𝚌𝚘𝚙𝚢!

I want to start off by saying that while I love historical fiction, this is not my go-to time period. With that said, I REALLY enjoyed this book! It had a lot of my favorite elements (historical fiction, mystery, thriller) all tied into one. I always find that books told in two timelines are so dynamic and I’m always drawn to them, and this book was no different. I felt as though the dual timelines really enhanced the storyline and loved how two characters from two separate time periods were woven together. On top of that, the way this book just flowed and the amount of research that went into this book made it so captivating.

I alternated between the audiobook and a physical copy. I really enjoyed my time listening to the narrator, Petrea Burchard. I felt like the pacing was perfect and she did such a great job in this role. This was my first time listening to a book narrated by Buchard, but I really enjoyed how she was able to transform my listening experience! I would highly recommend either format of A True Account!

I've read a decent amount of female-pirate fantasy stories, but this was my first time with a strictly historical pirate scenario, and I loved it! Hannah Masury finds herself aboard a ship taken over by notorious pirates, and she disguises herself as a cabin boy in order to save her neck. The pirates are hunting for treasure buried by one of their contemporaries who was recently hanged, but Hannah wants to get to it first in order to take her life into her own hands. In a second POV, Marian is researching a journal written by Hannah, and realizing that the story just may point her to the treasure that was never recovered. But boy, will there be some turns along the way!

The research and detail found in this novel is second to none, as I expected from Katherine Lowe, and she really is able to bring historical timelines to life. Hannah's story is entertaining, heartwarming, and more than a little inspiring, and I recommend it if you're a fan of strong FMCs and historical fiction! Thank you to Henry Holt & Co, Macmillan Audio, and NetGalley for my advance audio copy.

This was fantastic. I can't say too much without spoiling the twists, but let me say that it was extremely clever.


Review copy provided by publisher.

Wow! I dithered over requesting this audiobook because I wasn't sure how engaged I'd get in a story about a female pirate from the early 1700s (interspersed with a story about a "spinster" Radcliffe professor with a famous explorer father.) Am I glad I went for this! Katherine Howe beautifully brings to life her well-researched vision of how a girl falls into the pirate life (disguised as a cabin boy), becomes ruthless, and lives to tell the tale. She does not spare us from the violence of this life and has interesting historical perspective on how pirates functioned as teams, selected leaders, divided bounty and treated their victims. Hannah Masury is a servant girl in a Boston tavern catering to sailors, miserably poor, having been placed with the tavern owner as a small girl who still had her milk teeth. Her memories of her life before are vague. She describes herself as being as lazy as possible, interacts with ease with customers and contemporaries and one would expect this is how her life will go forever. How she becomes a pirate, while disguising her gender is best learned for yourself, but it's a totally engaging story.

We first learn about Hannah and her adventures through a journal/memoir she supposedly self-published that was found by a freshman student taking a course from Marian Beresford. Dr. Beresford is best known as her father's daughter. He is a great explorer, based out of NY City. When her student, Kay, brings her the journal, there's a tantalizing hint that an unfound treasure remains buried and findable 200 years later. It is the beginning of the depression. Marian's desire to make her own mark is keen. Is the journal real? Is it worth pursuing the treasure? Is there a treasure? Will her father's club (an Explorer's Club) finance them?) Pages are missing from the manuscript. Does that matter? Can't tell you as there would be spoilers.

Seriously: I read this via audiobook. The narrator was great! But also, I usually read audiobooks over a period of time, Maybe at the pace of 2-3 hours a week. I had to listen to this to the very end one Saturday, after trying to stick to my usual pattern and I had to read it without doing other things like cleaning house. It was really great. Highly recommend as entertaining fiction with some fun twists and turns and a set of interesting characters in two different periods.

The story of a young orphan in early Boston who finds herself escaping to sea, disguised as a cabin boy, only to discover she is now part of a band of pirates. A dual narrative is a jaded professor in the 1930s, excited to research buried treasure. As is usual with these dual POV books, the historical plot was much more interesting.

The pirate story was fun, if completely unbelievable. Lots of derring-do on the high seas and even a little romance thrown in. The professor, on the other hand, was unlikable and banal. The two plots slowly built to a conclusion one can guess at fairly early.

The quality of the writing was fine, and the pacing was great. The narrator of the audiobook, Petrea Burchard, did an excellent reading.

Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for the opportunity to listen to this pre-release book in exchange for an honest review.

Riveting and thoroughly enjoyable book about two women separated by time and place who dare to pursue their own goals no matter the cost! I was drawn in from the very start and my attention never wavered. I found this book to be gripping, thought provoking, and entertaining.

Golden Age of Piracy - Hannah Masury watches a pirate being hanged in the town square. She is intrigued and awed by him as well as the whispers about treasure in the Caribbean. When she becomes in danger, she runs away and joins the crew of the notorious pirate Edward "Ned" Low as a cabin boy. She has transformed herself from a young woman in service for most of her life, to a pirate! She is on a hunt for treasure!

1930 - Professor Marian Beresford is trying to piece together the story of Hannah Masury after Kay Lonergan, a student, shows her Hannah's diary. Marian is on a quest for the truth and can relate to the confines that society places on women.

Told in two timelines, this book was captivating and hard to put down! I enjoyed both women's tales but especially enjoyed Hannah's tale in the early 18th century. How she became a member of a pirate ship, finding her place in the world while hiding her own identity. Also hiding her identity is Marian who cannot be open about who she loves and desires.

I found this book to be captivating and it proved to be a fast read for me as I did not want to put this book down. I loved the sense of danger, the vivid descriptions, the setting on the high seas, the quest to find treasure, and the search for truth. This was an engaging tale about two women, trying to carve out a place for themselves in a male dominated society.

I had both the physical book and the audiobook. I found the narration on the audiobook to be very well done.

Well written, captivating, hard to put down and well thought out. I did not want to put this book down!

This is the story of Hannah Masury who escapes her life of servitude in a Boston tavern and disguises herself as a boy and joins the pirate crew of Ned Low. Her story is unknown until it is brought to the attention of Professor Marian Beresford in the 1930's. Marian is trying to live life on her terms and struggles against the expectations of her famous father and society. But as Marian becomes more and more pulled into the mystery of Hannah, which includes a hidden treasure, the more questions about the authenticity of the story arise. Did Hannah exist or is the manuscript a fake?

This is the story of women trying to survive and thrive in the world of men.

The narrator did a good job pulling readers into the story.

A True Account grabbed my attention right away. The story revolves around Hannah and Marian, two women who lived centuries apart but face the same challenges.

Hannah is a young woman with an adventurous spirit who is ready to take charge of her own life. She escapes a life of service when she joins a crew of pirates. Her time with the pirates is interesting and a bit gruesome at times.

Marian is a professor living in the shadow of her father’s legacy. She is a woman of a certain age who identifies with Hannah’s lack of freedom. When Marian comes across an account of Hannah’s life she becomes obsessed with solving the centuries old mystery that lies at the heart of Hannah’s story.

The action starts quickly and the story keeps a fast pace. The beginning of the story was well developed and I couldn’t turn it off. Towards the middle, the novel started to feel vague and rushed. The ending was very abrupt and the story felt incomplete. I would have liked more detail on both timelines. However, I think that a good book should leave you wanting more. Overall, I thought this was a good quick read and I enjoyed the narration by Petrea Burchard!